Humans have an innate desire to want what they can’t have. When a close friend, family member, or lover passes away, we tend to possess this same desire–to remain in contact with those that have left us. As Natalie Zarrelli’s article we read for class shows, even the brightest minds in history, like Edison, have sought ways to contact the deceased. Countless practices, traditions, and beliefs regarding a connection between the living and the dead have existed across varying religions, belief systems, and cultures. A staple of American spiritualism, which has since transcended into cult status, is the Ouija board.
Ever so present within American lore and horror, the Ouija board is believed to have origins just as mysterious as the boards themselves. Most are familiar with the simple board and totem that is supposedly capable of contacting spirits. I myself own a Ouija Board and have tried to contact spirits on several occasions with friends. Though I’m not entirely convinced of their efficacy, the experience is still highly eerie and potentially downright scary. Sitting in a pitch black room with the intention of contacting the spirit will put anyone on edge. As Fisher mentioned in their article, the ‘eerie’ stems from either “a failure of absence or by a failure of presence“. In either case, a Ouija board is clearly certain to invoke a feeling of eeriness. If the board piece does not move, aka a failure of presence, a sense of eeriness is created by the anticipation of movement or hope that a spirit will, in fact, respond. On the other hand, a failure of absence–i.e., a spirit communicating through the movement of the board piece–seems just as, if not more, eerie. While the hope of using a Ouija board is to engage with ghosts/spirits/the dead, when such engagement actually occurs, we fear the existence of these spirits since it reverts our general assumptions about life and death. It also creates a sense of curiosity about the spirits themselves, like who they are, why there are contacting us, and what their intentions are.
Either way, a Ouija board is an interesting relic of both spirituality and horror. If we can’t contact the paranormal through this game, then our assumptions about death seem to be confirmed. But if the board cooperates (even if it is just a friend moving the piece on purpose), we are then filled with an anxious wonder about our very own place within reality and doubts about our own mortality. Until someone like Elon Musk decides to abandon his aspirations for SpaceX and dedicates his efforts towards improving the Spirit Phone, we may just have to remain in eerie uncertainty.